Darwin evolution of Species

Northstar Games is known for their party and family games so it was a bit of a surprise when Luke Warren got in contact a few months ago to inform me the company was developing their first strategy title. Now the game, Evolution, is launching on Kickstarter to bring the card driven game to market. In Evolution, players will look to create species of animals and proceed to play cards in which to create traits, within the species, to increase its chances for survival to the end scoring.

Each player begins with a single species card (which mainly tracks the size and population of those animals), a Food Bag where the tokens for the food your species have eaten will be placed, and a hand four Trait cards.

Evolution is played in a series of rounds, which are then broken into four rounds:

Deal Cards – Simply enough each player receives three Trait cards as well as an extra card for each species they control. You aren’t saddled with only one species throughout the game as you’ll bring new species to the table while others will go extinct.

Place Food – The Trait cards not only indicate a unique aspect of a species but also holds a number in the lower corner which can be used to fill the community food source, known as the Watering Hole. During this phase everyone chooses a single card from their hand and places it, face down, on the Watering Hole. These cards will be revealed later to determine how much Food will be available this round.

Play Cards – In turn all players will, one by one, have an opportunity to play those Trait cards in their hand in a variety of ways: Add a Trait to one of their existing species, increase the size or population of a species, or create an entirely new species.

Species may each have up to three Traits (Traits can’t be duplicated within a species) and these can run the gamut from increasing the defensive ability of the animal, make the species more dangerous to prey, providing bonuses for feeding the animal, or even making the species carnivores; species are initially omnivorous.